A Spectator
by Jee Simovia
Summary: This is my mildy humorous(Nothing terribly funny) account of the Zero Wing Introduction. Read and Review


I was a spectator. A small insignificant viewer of history. Of the single most deliberate attack against mankind. It was AD 2101. War was beginning. I was aboard a ship that was oval shaped. It flew fast through space. War was beginning and we were heading toward the front lines, where our military bases were.   
  
On almost every planet, we had military installations that would back up our large cruisers. Our bases would be the backbone. With out them we would have almost no chance of surviving.   
  
I was on the bridge of this ship. I looked around, staring at the flashing monitors, the blipping screens. My job was to simply monitor the hull strength of the ship, nothing more. This gave me little to do. So my mind would wander, I would carry myself away to a dream world, where I was king. I had a beautiful queen and I would rule over a land of loyal and happy subjects. There was no war in my fantasy land, no large metal ships with guns. No one had visited space, no one knew what was out there.  
  
But sadly, there is something else out there. There are humanoid aliens. A species of a different kind. They were attacking us, the humans. They resembled humans, for the most part. Their skin was a greenish color, and they were smaller and more hunched over. They often would frighten little children. But as a child, when they were first discovered, I was unafraid of them. I knew that they would start a war, I knew that I would have to fight them.   
  
So I tried to become a pilot, so I could fight them directly. But, unfortunately, my reflexes were poor, I could not maneuver well in the small star fighters. In the simulators, I would constantly get destroyed by the easiest level of artificial intelligence. I left the Star-Pilot's academy, sad and depressed.   
  
Then an opportunity came up to serve in the military. Several star cruisers were being built. The call went out for people to serve as crew members. I quickly jumped on the opportunity. I could finally be something, someone.  
  
So I arrived, Private Mark Laar, aboard the spaceship Reynolds. I didn't fit in with the members of my crew to well. Most of the people on the ship were using the new type of English language. They had been brought up that way. I was brought up to use classical English, with all the words, they called it Oldspeak. The new language, newspeak, was a cut down version, with strange sentence order. I disliked newspeak, but I had to learn it. Otherwise I couldn't communicate with most of the other crew members.  
  
Those crew members. I looked up from my screen. My ship mates. I looked to my right. There was Private Essen, our operator. He would take all the transmissions. I didn't know him to well. I hadn't tired to get to know him. Then there was my personal friend, Corporal Rich Weston. He actually spoke oldspeak, so I knew him best. As my eyes went from crew member to crew member, the ship suddenly shook violently. I looked at my monitor, which was displaying red, and then up toward the captain, who was sitting in the middle of the bridge.  
  
"What happen?" He yelled out, in newspeak.  
  
The mechanic on the bridge turned to him and shouted back, "Someone set us up the bomb!"  
  
Essen looked up frantically from his console. "We get signal!" He shouted to the captain.  
  
"What?!" The captain barked to Essen.   
  
Essen flipped a couple switches and then turned to face the captain. "Main screen turn on!" He shouted.  
  
The captain looked up at the image. I heard him squeak out a quick, "It's you!"  
  
My eyes widened at the sight of this image. It was him, the human who had betrayed his own race, and decided to fight for the invaders. It was CATS, the man who was now half covered by metal, a "scar" from battles before.   
  
CATS' voice came out of the receiver, metallic and synthesized. "How are you gentlemen!" I shot a glance at the image with a strange look on my face. How are you gentlemen? That sounded very threatening to me. I relaxed. This guy was a joke. I glanced over to Weston. He had relaxed too. The rest of the crew, that only spoke newspeak, were frightened. They stared at CATS like he was the devil himself.  
  
CATS continued, "All your base are belong to us! You are on the ways to destruction!"  
  
At these words the captain fell to the ground. He pounded his fist in frustration. He almost looked like he was going to cry. I almost looked like I was going to laugh my head off.  
  
The captain looked up and cried at the image, "What you say?"  
  
CATS ignored the captains question and continued, "You have no chance to survive. Make your time." With that, the image faded, CATS' mechanical laughter fading with it.   
  
The captain continued to look downward. An expression of great sadness was painted on his face. We had lost all our bases. We had lost what we needed. Despite the dire situation, I couldn't help but want to burst out laughing at the idiocy of newspeak. I glanced over at Weston. Although I knew he was worried about our bases, I knew that he wanted to cry out in laughter.  
  
More timed passed as the captain remained unmoving, in a state of thought. I always wondered what one could think with such a messed up vocabulary. Essen looked at me and then shouted at the captain, "Captain!" He wanted an order.  
  
The captain looked up. A look of determination crossed his face. He had made a decision. "Take off every 'Zig'!" I snickered at this. Even though I had heard newspeak spoken almost everywhere, I never ceased to find it hilarious when used in serious context. The captain shot me a glance, but I dodged it by turning to my console. A picture of the pilots walking toward their fighters, the Zigs. The captain puffed out his chest, and encouraged his men, "You know what you doing!"  
  
I looked back up at the captain. He had the look of utmost seriousness on his face now. In his mind of few words, he was important, he was going to save the day. He continued to bark out orders. "Move Zig!" The screen showed multiple Zigs moving toward the exit of the hangar.  
  
I looked at the screen and then back at the captain. His hand went out before him and he opened his mouth to speak words of great encouragement. I looked at Essen. He eagerly waited for the captains words, like a child waiting to receive dessert after dinner. I was still laughing inwardly, and I was doing my best to hold it in.  
  
With his hand outstretched the captains words came as a knell, "For great justice!" Or they came as that to the rest of the crew. I just stood up and ran, along with Weston, to the bathroom, to let out the surge of laughter that was about the break from my mouth.  
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